Small MPU – Page 709
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Reviews
Walker Payne
Dir: Matt Williams. US. 2006. 113mins.Like a lovingly-crafted curio from another era, Walker Payne is a leisurely-paced perioddrama which defies current storytelling trends to remain resolutely classicalin style and form. Coming off like a cross between Hallmark Hall Of Fame and Amores Perros, if that can be imagined, it faces ...
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News
Buena Vista picks up Oz rights to Samoan Wedding
Buena Vista Internationalhas picked up Australian rights to feel-good New Zealand comedy SamoanWedding (aka Sione's Wedding) andwill release it in mid-July.Director Chris Graham'sdebut film grossed $2m (NZ$3.14m) for Sony in its first five weeks on homesoil. Putting aside US-funded local blockbusters such as the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and ...
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News
Bubble set for multi-platform release in Korea
Steven Soderbergh's Bubble is set to be the first film in Korea to receive a day-and-date multi-platform release onmobile phones as well as theatrical, cable TV, DVD and video-on-demand (VoD).The film is to open on May 11.The experimental thrilleroriginally saw a simultaneous release in the US this past January in ...
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Reviews
Over The Hedge
Dirs: Tim Johnson, KareyKirkpatrick. US. 2006. 87mins.Cute animals and energetic slapstick make up for anoverly generic storyline in Over The Hedge, DreamWorks Animation's entry in this year'scrowded field of computer-animated family movies. Younger kids should certainlyrespond to the impressively realised creatures and the rambunctious physicalcomedy, but teens and parents (even ...
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News
Hopes high for end to funding chaos
Greek film production has undergone a financingcrisis during the last couple of years - but amid the chaos several projects havemanaged to move forward.The underlying uncertainty has been causedby the same debate that has echoed across Europe; whether public funds should financefeature production.Under Petros Tatoulis, then Greece's deputy Culture Minister ...
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News
Mission sequel underperforms domestically with $48m
Paramount's Mission: Impossible III was the runaway winner over the weekendas expected but the estimated $48m three-day total fell far below expectations.JJ Abrams' feature directorial debut averaged $11,872 on anextremely wide 4,054 screens yet didn't take as much as the previous instalmentin 2000, which opened on $57.8m. The 1996 original ...
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News
Blessed By Fire, War Tapes triumph at Tribeca
Tristan Bauer's Argentina-Spain co-production, the wartime drama BlessedBy Fire won the bestnarrative feature at the fifth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which endedyesterday, while Deborah Scranton's War Tapes won the documentary award.Jurgen Vogel won best actor in a narrative feature for Germany's FreeWill and the CzechRepublic's Eva Holubov won corresponding best ...
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News
Hopkins' Dead Sheep wins international prize at Hot Docs
The awards for the 2006 Hot Docs Canadian InternationalDocumentary Festival were handed out in Toronto on May 5, with best Canadian documentarygoing to Shelley Saywell's Martyr Street.Best International Documentary went to Ben Hopkins' UK title 37Uses For A Dead Sheep,while best documentary short was awarded to Ibtisam Ma'arana's Badal from ...
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News
Mission accomplished as Paramount, UIP gross $70.3m
Paramount's Mission: Impossible III swept across the international landscapeover the weekend as it grossed an estimated $70.3m from 7,390 sites in 57territories.Combined with the $48m domestic tally, the third instalment in theaction series took $118m worldwide to register the biggest global launch for thefranchise to date.The strength of the result ...
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News
Motocross legend David Bailey to get big screen treatment
Rodney Wilson's Todd Gilmer Productions has secured the liferights to Motocross and Supercross legend David Bailey.Bailey started riding at 10 and went on to win every major pro Motocrossand Supercross event in the early 1980s before he was paralysed in a freakaccident and became a triathlon champion.'Bailey's real life is ...
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News
Spanish broadcasters team up for Fiction Factory
Four heavyweight Spanish television platforms - pay outlets Via Digital and Quiero TV and free-to-air broadcasters Antena 3 and Telecinco - are joining forces to create thematic channel The Fiction Factory (FDF) dedicated to Spanish and US fiction series.FDF will launch on both Quiero and Via Digital beginning next month ...
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News
Perlman, Rea, Furmann join cast of Mutant Chronicles
Ron Perlman, Stephen Rea and Benno Furmann have joined JohnMalkovich and Thomas Jane in Ed Pressman's upcoming sci-fi project TheMutant Chronicles.Pressman Film Corp, Grosvenor Park and Isle Of Man Filmfinanced the project and Voltage Pictures is handling international sales atCannes.Shooting is set to begin this summer in London and the ...
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News
Weitz returns to directing chair on New Line's Compass
Anand Tucker has exited the job of directing New Line's children'sfantasy epic The Golden Compass, and he has been replaced by the project's original directorChris Weitz.Weitz relinquished his director's role in December 2004 citingtechnical challenges but stayed on as screenwriter.Now he gets a second bite of the cherry following the ...
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News
Star backs high-def trio from Hong Kong's Yee
Star Chinese Movies isinvesting in three high-definition films to be executive produced byaward-winning Hong Kong filmmaker Derek Yee.The first of the threefilms, love story Pandora's Booth,started filming last week in Hong Kong. Starring Hong Kong popidols Fiona Sit and Kenny Kwan, the film is directed by Mak Kai-kwong whostarted his ...
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News
StudioCanal slate includes two from Wong Kar-wai
StudioCanal is heading to the CannesMarket with a line up that includes two films from Cannes jury president WongKar-wai along with the latest from Mathieu Kassovitz, Emir Kusturica andDavid Lynch and a sentimental documentary about a year in the lives of newbornbabies.Along with the previously announced Lady From Shanghai, which ...
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News
Sokurov to receive Locarno's Leopard of Honour
Locarno Film Festival's Leopard of Honour will be awarded inthe first edition under the new artistic director Frederic Maireto the Russian master Alexander Sokurov.Sokurov has a special fondness for the Swiss festival sincehis first film The Lonely Human Voice wasawarded the Bronze Leopard there in 1987 and, ten years later, ...
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News
States and Stories take top prizes at Korea's Jeonju festival
Canadian director DenisCote's Drifting States and Stories From The North, from Thaidirector Uruphong Raksasad, picked up the top prizes at South Korea's Jeonju InternationalFilm Festival (April 27 - May 5).Drifting States was awarded the Indie Vision Woosuk Award for films by first andsecond-time directors while documentary StoriesFrom The North took ...
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News
Umizaru sequel floods Japanese box office
Japanese action title Umizaru 2: Test Of Trust, about a teamof coast guard divers, has scored the biggest opening of the year for adomestic film with a gross of $8.64m (Y964m) over the two-day weekend (May6-7).Produced by Fuji TV anddistributed by Toho, the film opened on 315 screens for an ...
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News
FilmFour gets on board for first Screenwriters Festival
The firstInternational Screenwriters' Festival, to be held in the UK from June 27-30, has added FilmFour as one of its sponsors. Supportersof the inaugural event, to be held at Cheltenham Film Studios in the Cotswolds,include Gosford Park writer Julian Fellowes, Gladiator writer Bill Nicholson and Stoned director Stephen Woolley. Thefestival ...
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News
Lumina's Panic Attack label to represent thriller Reverb
London-based sales company Lumina Films will be handlingthe worldwide rights (including UK) for supernatural thriller Reverb.The film is being handled by Lumina's thriller label PanicAttack.Reverb stars rising UK actors Leo Gregory, Eva Birthistle, Margo Stilley andLuke de Woolfson. The project is in post-production,eyeing an autumn festival launch.The film centres on ...